First Combined Liver-Kidney Transplant at PGIMER, India

The Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, India, has performed its first simultaneous liver-kidney transplantation on February 3, 2018.

The combined liver-kidney transplant was performed on a 40-year-old male patient who was admitted to the institute with liver and kidney failure.

The transplantation was made possible by the donor family of a young girl from Bihar. The girl was brought to the institute in an extremely critical condition on January 25, 2018, after a road accident that happened on January 24, 2018.

She had been admitted to the institute after sustaining a severe head injury. On 2nd January, 2018, the girl was declared brain dead.

After the girl’s family decided to donate the girl’s organs, her liver and one of the kidneys were transplanted to the 40-year-old male patient while the other kidney was transplanted to another patient. In the decision of the National Organ & Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO), the heart was airlifted to Delhi as there was no matching recipient for the heart at PGIMER. It was allocated to a Delhi hospital for the matching recipient.

According to Prof. Jagat Ram, Director of PGIMER, “Team PGIMER has done it again. It has performed its first CLKT, one of the most complex and demanding organ transplantations.”

Dr RK Dhiman, Head of Department, Department of Hepatology, PGIMER, said, “It was a sequential transplant where the liver was replaced first, which took around 10 hours, followed by the kidney transplant. The surgery began around 5 am on Saturday and lasted till night.”

Officials of PGIMER expressed their appreciation for the generous gesture of the braveheart donor family of a young girl from Bihar, who was declared brain dead by the Brain Death Certification Committee.

The Medical Superintendent at PGIMER, Prof. Anil K Gupta said “Words cannot describe the selfless gesture of the donor family. Due to their decision, the donor family has given a new lease of life to three terminally ill patients.”

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